With rapid developments of network coverage and data requirement, a scale of a mobile network is expanded increasingly, and the number of network equipment, base stations and power systems is increased in multiples, and therefore an issue of power consumption in a wireless communication network has become a focus in the industry. The base station in a cell is a main power-consumption device in the wireless communication network, and the number of base stations may be increased rapidly as the number of users and communication capacity in a cellular communication system are increased increasingly. Therefore, a key to realize green communication is to reduce the power consumption of the base station.
In order to save energy on a base station side, as a DRX mechanism on a terminal side, dynamic on/off can be performed on the base station side based on an actual capacity requirement, thereby reasonably allocating power consumption and achieving an object of energy saving. The content described above has been discussed in small cell enhancements of RAN1 of 3GPP, i.e. small cell on/off.
In the discussion of 3GPP, the small cell on/off can be implemented in many ways, for example, based on data packet arrival and user arrival and the like. However, since the data packet arrival and the user arrival are random, time points when a small cell determines to switch on/off are random in this case. Therefore, sleeping of the small cell may result in performance loss for a traditional user, and a length of time during which the small cell is switched on/off may further affect performance of the on/off mechanism.
The DRX mechanism provides a balance between power consumption and quick response for the user. With the DRX mechanism, the user only monitors a control channel periodically, and burst of data is addressed by an inactivity timer or by setting a shorter DRX timer. In the traditional DRX mechanism, the cell is deemed to be always on by default, but in a scenario under which the small cell may enter a sleeping state, the on/off state of the cell is uncertain at a certain time point. If a terminal in an activation time duration of the DRX mode desires to receive data from a cell while the cell is in the sleeping time duration at this time, it is impossible to achieve desired communication. Therefore, it is required to coordinate the on/off on the cell side and the DRX mode on the terminal side.